Readiness Summit Readys Kids for Kindergarten

On Tuesday, Education stakeholders around the Miami Valley gathered to talk about how to better prepare youngsters for their first year at school, and as to find ways to help build skills children need to be successful later in life.

Yesterday’s Kindergarten Readiness Summit really grew out of the Common Core State Standards initiative - a state-led effort that establishes educational standards for K through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics. It’s a voluntary program but 45 states have signed on to it so far.

Ready Set Soar is an Early Childhood collaborative in Dayton. Robin Lightcap is the Director. She spoke at yesterday’s conference. Lightcap says local Schools typically aren’t interacting with pre-school providers in their districts, so organizations like her’s can help bridge that communication gap, and communicate those readiness needs.

She Adds, “You know what we were doing largely today is connecting the public school system with the childcare pre-school providers in their district, and that really is a beneficial thing.”

And Lightcap says that the collaborations between k-12 educators and pre-school providers is steadily growing saying “We actually have about half of our districts are already really actively doing this. We call them readiness coalitions. So at a community level they meet and they work together and say how can we improve readiness? How do we reach more parents and families?”

According to officials, this year’s Kindergarten Readiness Summit was the largest in its 4 year history, with more than 400 hundred principals, school district administrators, early childhood leaders, and non-profit and government organization attending yesterday’s conference.